I have never been so relieved to see a washing machine in my life, and that includes the time my toddler decorated our sofa with a full jar of bolognese.

The drive down to Brancaleone from Lamezia Terme airport had been straightforward enough, if you consider navigating Italian motorways with a hangry seven-year-old and a sat-nav that developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis to be straightforward. Somewhere around Catanzaro, Sheila decided we absolutely needed to take a scenic detour through what appeared to be an olive grove. I am still not convinced there was a road. There were definitely goats. They looked judgmental.

We arrived at the property in Brancaleone with the late afternoon sun doing that golden thing it does so well in Calabria, all warm and forgiving, which was fortunate because I had just spent twenty minutes arguing with an automatic gate that seemed to require a specific combination of hope, patience, and mild swearing. The villa sat there looking terribly composed and Mediterranean, all whitewashed walls and terracotta, while I emerged from the car looking like someone who had recently survived a minor natural disaster. My husband Mark had the decency not to laugh until I was out of earshot. The children made no such effort.

The first thing that struck me, once I had stopped sweating and started noticing things again, was the smell. Not the children, though there was that too. No, this was proper southern Italian air, thick with jasmine and something herby that I later learned was wild oregano growing in cracks where absolutely nothing should grow. The garden was not manicured in that intimidating English way where you feel guilty for breathing near the herbaceous borders. This was gloriously relaxed, citrus trees heavy with fruit, a pergola dripping with vines, the sort of place where nature has been allowed to get on with it and the result is infinitely better than anything I have ever achieved with a trowel and good intentions.

The mishap, because there is always a mishap with us, came during the great suitcase unpacking of 2024. In my wisdom, I had packed a bottle of decent olive oil at the bottom of my bag, wrapped in what I clearly thought was sufficient protection but was, in fact, approximately three layers of optimism. The lid had worked itself loose somewhere between Gatwick and Brancaleone, and my summer wardrobe was now comprehensively marinated. Every item I owned smelled like a delicatessen. Mark found this hilarious until he discovered his own swimming trunks had absorbed enough oil to fry an egg. The washing machine, when I located it in the utility room, became my immediate best friend. I stood there feeding it soggy, fragrant clothes and felt an unexpected wave of something like contentment. This is it, I thought. This is the holiday. Not the pristine arrival I had imagined, but this slightly chaotic, oily, warm moment in a foreign utility room while my children shrieked about something in the pool outside.

The villa itself rewarded closer inspection. The kitchen was properly equipped, not one of those holiday let situations where you get a blunt knife and a wooden spoon that has seen things. I opened cupboards and found actual pans, actual plates, actual hope that we might cook something that did not come from a packet. The living area opened onto that garden through doors that seemed designed for the specific purpose of letting warm air and the sound of cicadas wander through. Upstairs, the bedrooms were simple and cool, tiled floors that felt delicious underfoot after a day in the heat.

That first evening, we did not venture far. There seemed no need. We walked the few minutes to the local shops, which was an education in itself. The bakery produced warm bread that made our usual supermarket loaf seem like a sad memory. The small grocer had tomatoes that actually tasted of something, which my children found suspicious until hunger overcame skepticism. We bought wine from a man who seemed genuinely delighted by our terrible Italian, and cheese that I cannot name but still dream about.

Back at the villa, we ate on the terrace as darkness settled and the sky filled with stars that seemed unnecessarily impressive, as if Calabria was showing off. The children, miraculously, were too tired to argue. Mark and I sat with our dubious wine and watched moths commit slow suicide in the candle flames, and I thought about how rarely we do this. Just sit. Just be somewhere without planning the next thing, without the constant low-grade anxiety of ordinary life.

The oil incident, I decided, had been a gift. It had forced me to slow down immediately, to abandon any pretense of having things together, to start the holiday as I apparently needed to continue it. Slightly messy, slightly ridiculous, but present in a way I rarely manage at home.

I fell asleep that night to the sound of the sea somewhere in the distance and my husband snoring slightly, and I knew already that this was going to be one of those trips that lives in the memory long after the olive oil stains have faded.